I take no issues with anything you have just said, except the part about there being no claim. It is a claim, implicitly or perhaps not so implicitly, when there is mention of a gamma spec showing something interesting.

Even if this is not a purely scientific venue, I think we should set our sights on a certain amount of rigor in the discussions that take place here. Or at least not be surprised if objections from the normative framework of science are raised in discussions about scientific topics and in assessing claims of a scientific nature.

As a norm in science, if you make a claim, you should be prepared to back it up. It is possible we're not in a scientific context, in which case an inventor can make a claim and then not be prepared to back it up. Or we might be in a scientific context, and the person's behavior is not professional by failing to back up the claim. Regardless, in a scientific context, failure to support a claim will as a practical matter result in it not being taken seriously.

Do you disagree?

Your polite answers above have have been helpful and enlightening and would not fall under this.

There is no such thing when dealing with professionals in a scientific context. If there are trade secrets and the like, a professional will politely state this. Perhaps too obvious to mention, but don't be detained for long by anyone who makes a claim but evades intelligent questions by responding with insults or irrelevant questions in return.

You are in no wise a victim, Adrian. It does not require a network analysis from graph theory to ascertain who the recurring sources of conflict are. The people whose views you disagree with do not get into unedifying conflicts with the majority of people here. Mostly you at this time.

A note to perpetually dyspeptic contributors: consider other participants when you post, who will have to read or choose to skip over your comments. Ideally there will be something of interest for a group of readers beyond an unedifying fight between you and another person whose views you disagree with.

It is important not to judge the empirical evidence in a field such as LENR by irrational proponents who become attached to every implausible claim made by this or that entrepreneur. Familiarizing oneself with the literature will help to form an opinion about which voices are credible and which are merely credulous outliers in a small, self-selected group. The people and companies in the list you give are very different from one another; some are not credible, or even possibly predatory, while others have quite a bit of credibility. The temptation to lump everyone in the same category should be avoided.

I look forward to what Robert Duncan has to publish, for example, and am hoping some kind of publication is in the works in connection with the Sidney Kimmel grant.

Related to this and preceding points — it seems like this plan commits not only the generation making the plans, but their children and grandchildren as well, to large capital costs and important coordinating actions, to prevent a fraction of the rockets from hitting the planet, and to make sure the ice cubes do the right thing. Is it ethical to commit one's grandchildren to a plan they weren't consulted on? There are a few circumstances in which it could be argued that such a forced commitment is reasonable; what is the circumstance underwriting the starting generation's committing its grandchildren to the continued terraforming of Mars?

machines that make themselves, which is to say general purpose machines that can make anything, sort of like 3D printers. These have just been invented recently.

Incidentally, the plot of Horizon Zero Dawn, a PS4 video game, was that self-replicating military robots started to multiply without end as a result of a system failure. They took over the world and (in time) snuffed out the remnants of humanity. The only way for humanity to "survive" was to create underground bunkers where people would be hatched in vitro hundreds of years later, after the robot plague had wound down. They were then to be educated with a system put in place for this purpose so that they could continue civilization's legacy. (Plot twist: the education subsystem failed, and the later-hatched people ended up reverting to a hunter-gatherer society. Second plot twist: the robot plague did not fully wind down.)

We know quite well the consequences of invading "new" continents and islands on Earth. The original inhabitants far too often end up in museums and diRies of explorers as examples of what once was there.

Yes, I'm quite aware of that danger, and it has been in my mind this whole time. But I think it would be a futile argument to argue against the idea that people should have explored (or will explore) other islands on Earth. But that is also why I introduced the part about a risk assessment of harming life with any amount of sentience.

My thought is that there are already dozens (hundreds?) of known Earth-like planets in orbit around nearby stars. The likelihood in my mind that there is extraterrestrial life of some rudimentary form seems close to 100 percent (which is different than saying that it is close enough for examination anytime soon).

How many stars are there in the visible universe? Some appreciable fraction of them surely have life on planets orbiting them. The numbers we're talking about imply to my mind that life-bearing planets in the universe are as abundant as microbes on this planet.

A suitable analogy for the moral dimension to this question is exploration of a new continent or newly-discovered island on Earth. I would not argue that we should not go there out of fear of disrupting the native species unless the potential cost was high indeed.

I personally don't see a moral conundrum in the possibility of killing a native species of microbe on Mars, provided we try to learn about it before such a thing happens. It is a feature/bug of the universe that when you go off to somewhere else you bring microbes with you, and with them come the possibility of catastrophic replacement.

The moral dimension for me would depend upon how sentient the creatures are. If there were small rodents or something, it would feel a little differently (maybe?). If they were (hypothetically speaking) bona fide martians with homes and so on, that would tip the scales for me against it.

There is of course the danger going the other way: we could bring back some martian bug that kills all algae or something, and then watch the food chain collapse.

I will take nothing for granted until someone will pony up some genuine evidence for various vague claims. There could be artifact; there could incorrect conclusions derived from working outside of one's area of knowledge; there could be doubts that lead to a revisiting of earlier results; there could be failed controls; there could be a telephone game of details that degrade in quality from one person to the next.

It will interesting indeed if there has been a solid replication. But without specific details, I will not assume there has in fact been one. Nullius in verba, as the saying goes.

Krivit may have more of the temperament of a lawyer than a journalist, but there are some relevant details in that transcript, such as the fact that Essen had little exposure to calculating things related to steam and steam quality. As Essen says, "I’m new at steam, unfortunately."

Sad, but not unexpected. In a controversial field like this, there are all manner of people involved. There are qualified and skilled scientists who have made their career in some relevant field. There are capable engineers, hobbyists and amateurs doing interesting work. There are unskillful and unrigorous scientists and maverick engineers who draw conclusions without having done adequate controls. There are entrepreneurs and inventors who are coy with details for various reasons. There are observers who must rely on others' reports in order to draw any conclusions and so are critically dependent upon an accurate assessment of the credibility of each person or group making a claim (that's most of us here). There are good-natured skeptics who question everything. There are committed skeptics who are attached to their assumptions with religious intensity. And towards the lower tail of the distribution, there are people who smell an opportunity and seek to capitalize on any ambiguity and confusion that might exist by preying on people's hopes and wishful thinking. The important thing is to keep in mind that all of these things are possibilities and, on one hand, to put off drawing firm conclusions until the evidence is overwhelming, and, on the other, to not get drawn into something in the meantime that looks like it might be an ill-conceived research project or a scam.

It's the wild west. Good doses of optimism, skepticism and patience go a long way.

So what you are asking for is for me to give to anyone who asks, all of the fruits of my labors without even the courtesy of knowing the identity of the person or persons asking for that gift. Is that what you are saying?

You've made a claim about elevated counts in a GM counter on a public forum where questions like this are expected, encouraged and routinely asked. If you are going to make claims without supporting them, perhaps another forum would be better suited to your interests.

It's fine to suggest that something is proprietary knowledge, but this will not support your claim, of course.

Is there any implied threat of being dissed here for not complying to any and all anonymous demands for such value to be given. Such dissing is not an uncommon feature of this forum. And no of course I would not consent to a work around being to make the same demands on a friend and colleague.

We've discussed your case internally, and the agreement is that you'll be handled by Alan, so it's not a threat. I do think Alan will be better suited to responding to reasonable questions that people raise than you.

As stated this is very preliminary raw data and while it is exciting data it is not ready to be dissected with questions from anonymous unknowable entities. When more information is ready to be shared it will be!

As I've said, anonymity has no bearing on the merits of the questions. Dissecting the raw data is a service to you, and no harm comes from it. We all get closer to the truth as a result. It is focusing on personalities that obscures the truth.